Posted on 11/14/2003 5:13:19 AM PST by SJackson
Should your health be left to you and your doctor? Or should agents of your federal, state or local government manage it? And should those charged with public heath responsibilities give higher priority to non-health agendas than to saving human lives?
Although we've often discussed these question in overall policy terms, looking at the health care systems in this country and health insurance arrangements, we're going to look at how political policies impact your health through the public health departments in federal, state and local governments. In particular, we'll look how the management and mismanagement of the outbreak of the West Nile Virus is impacting us. At issue here is not just their failure to control the disease properly. It's that the failure - specifically, the refusal to use the insecticide DDT to control the mosquitoes that carry the virus - is based upon discredited information and ongoing superstitions concerning the safety of DDT.
The West Nile Virus infects people and animals, including certain mosquito species, dogs, cats, birds and many other warm-blooded species. The virus infects mosquitoes when the suck up the virus in the blood of infected warm-blooded animals. Infected mosquitoes then pass it on when they bite other animals, inoculating new victims with the virus. Mosquitoes also spread other diseases, such as malaria, earning these bugs the dubious title of "flying hypodermic needles."
The virus first appeared in this country in New York City in 1999; before that, it infected people in Africa, southern Europe and southwest Asia. Since appearing in New York, state health authorities have reported West Nile Virus infection in 8219 people so far this year and 4156 last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The virus has killed 284 people so far this year, already exceeding last year's toll of 182 deaths. [http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/surv&controlCaseCount02.htm, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/surv&controlCaseCount03.htm accessed 8 November 2003]
In most cases, West Nile Virus infection causes a flu-like illness that clears up in a few days. In some cases, however, it infects the brain and neighboring tissues, causing inflammation and swelling (encephalitis and/or meningitis) that kills the victim.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Because the characteristics of this pesticide - low cost, ease of application, extreme safety to human beings, unparalled effectivemess against mosquitos, makes it by far the most effective method of protecting people. In the absence of DDT, there are 1.2 - 2 million additional deaths per year.
Second... If DDT was not responsible for the thin egg shells, what was?
Egg shell thinning was never even demonstrated as a causal factor in the reduction in populations of most birds of prey. Frankly, most of the endangered species were endangered because people hunted them to the point of extinction. And not out of an uneducated ignorance either; I remember reading part of an essay written in the 1930s by the head of the department of ornothology at the American Museum of Natural History on the status of the perigine falcon - his commentarty was along the lines of "the perigine falcon is a rotten bird, it has no value, it's almost been wiped out, and that's a good thing". No joke, that was the summary of his opinion.
The few birds of prey that did seem to suffer from shell thinning (the osprey, for example) had the misfortune of living in areas of the country that were undergoing transformation that severely impacted the birds food supply, both in quantity and quality. I believe that it is well established that poor food supply relative to population, which will in the long run lead to a population crash, in the short run leads to, among other things, shell thinning. The problem here is lack of nutrition, not presence of DDT
There have been many controlled studies across species of birds to determine if DDT ingestion has any affect on shell thickness. None of them show any statistically signigficant effect, with experiments demonstrating insignificant shell thickening in the presence of DDT ingestion slightly outnumbering those that show statistically irrelevant shell thinning, both outnumbered by studies showing no statistically disernable difference. Check out Dr Steve Milloys Junk Science site www.junkscience.com , or Dr Fred Singers Science & Environmental Policy Project site www.sepp.org for lots of information.
Hope this was helpful.. :-)
2. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. Click here
3. DDT is also a mosquito repellant. Spray it on the inside walls of your horse barn, and mosquitos will avoid it for 6 months. And none of it will leach into the environment. That is why the author emphasized "careful" use.
Skeeters become resitant to most methods used to eradicate them. Are you saying that we shouldn't even try, just in case we might make them more resistant to whatever method we use?
All very good information!!!
The above brings up a major peeve of mine - I think it should be required that any member of the media that is going to right or report on studies, etc...that use such numbers should take a brief course on the use of statistical numbers, correlation and causation, and relative risks.........maybe then the truth of most of these studies would actually be seen, instead of just the press releases claiming want the authors wanted the studies to say.
Makes sense to me.
1. Because DDT is virtually harmless to humans and other mammals, while the substitutes are not. I breathed DDT for hours at a time working on a farm in the 50s. Who knows how many farmers have died from exposure to the other chemicals, but I can personally name two.Soldiers were sprayed with concentrated amounts of the stuff during World War II, without ill effects. It's estimated that DDT has saved more human lives than any non-food substance except penicillin.
-Eric
The banning of DDT was an act of genocide almost without parallel in the bloody history of man. The numbers of malarial dead that could have been saved make Rwanda look like a pleasant dream.
No bird ever went extinct because of DDT. The thin eggshell claim has been soundly refuted. And even if it were true; so what? Millions of brown people should die so some small hawk would survive? Rachel Carson and her liberal ilk have perpetrated among the worst crimes of the twentieth century, or any century.
A typical uninformed comment. Lets hope no one in your family gets West Nile Virus. The solution is to use DDT again. The looney Rachel Carson crowd killed many times more humans by their phoney B.S. than DDT ever hurt anything including birds. Malaria is rampant again and people are dying because of this insane thinking.
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